


mother nature, are you in control

by opaldawn



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Domesticity, F/F, Fluff (Literal), Gift Fic, Post-Canon, Post-Episode: s03e21 Juno Steel and What Lies Beyond, catch me writing a fic and not using that tag. you wont, dannys werewolf AU means so much to me, so here i am giving back to the wlwerewolf community
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-13
Updated: 2020-12-13
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:33:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,927
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28052478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/opaldawn/pseuds/opaldawn
Summary: She idly pats at Vespa's head, pages through a magazine she'd picked up at the store, makes herself laugh by telling Vespa all the second-rate celebrity gossip Ymir has to offer and getting nothing but a blank stare in response, answers Rita's many texts updating the two of them in long-winded form on the crew's most recent exploits. Killing time until the Rangian sunrise.The dust of a life on the lam has settled. The werewolf routine is practically second nature by now.
Relationships: Buddy Aurinko/Vespa Ilkay
Comments: 12
Kudos: 31





	mother nature, are you in control

**Author's Note:**

  * For [goinghost](https://archiveofourown.org/users/goinghost/gifts).



> so almost a month ago i asked danny if i could write something set in [her werewolf 'verse](https://archiveofourown.org/series/2021005) (which should be required reading all around). he said yes. then i suffered terminal writer's block, bangficitis, and a near-fatal case of exams. here it is finally.
> 
> content warning for mild body horror, just one sentence. maybe 2/3 of the way through the fic, the paragraph that starts "Eventually, long after the dusk has given way to a starless night, Vespa stirs against her."
> 
> danny's werewolf AU was one of the first fics i read in this fandom, and DEFINITELY one of my favorites!! it's such a nice spin on the genre and i just wanted to make this. i hope i did it justice. drops it and runs away

The first sign that something is terribly _off_ is small, almost unnoticeably so. But Buddy Aurinko is a perceptive woman with a keen eye, and more than anything, she knows the routines of her wife. So when there's no light shining through the second-floor window of the slightly overgrown apartment building, it sets her immediately on edge. 

Sunset on Ymir, the small Saturnian moon where they're staying as they await Buddy's next surgery, has fallen. The deep brown sky is hazy with gas, and the narrow streets are dappled in shadow. She knows Vespa would have turned on the light in the apartment as soon as the sun went down, even if Buddy had been there to help interpret the shadows. 

Mentally she pages through every possible scenario in her mind, drafts an appropriate response to each. Can she still draw her blaster fast enough to fight off a potential intruder? Could she call the Carte Blanche at this time of night, enlist Rita's help to track Vespa's comms, should she get home to an empty apartment? (Does she remember just the right words to say, the right tone to use, to give her wife some measure of comfort on her worst days?)

The stairs up are thin, steep, and she has to stop several times to rest her legs and rearrange the heavy shopping bags in her arms. She'd wanted to go with Vespa, but at the last minute, a call from one of her wife's entourage of doctorly contacts had required her attention. Only an hour or so, Buddy had promised, but the errands had taken her longer than she'd expected, longer than she liked, the little delays of domestic life adding up. 

Vespa hadn't answered her call, which _should_ have been the first sign, in retrospect. Her mechanical pulse quickens as she allows her mind to get away from itself for just a second before reeling it back in.

She makes it to the top of the stairs, eventually, and knocks at the door to their little rented studio. "Vespa, love?" she calls.

No response. She sets the bags down, punches in the door code in the keypad. One hand goes to her blaster, the other gripping the handle of her cane tightly, as she shoulders the door open and fumbles for the lightswitch. 

Nothing seems out of place, at first. There's no blood splatters on the floor, no sign of a forced entry or anything. The painting covering the nook in the wall with their safe of valuables is still perfectly straight. The door to their room is just slightly ajar, the light inside off as well, which she marks down as another thing out of place- Vespa hasn't slept with the door open since the two had been reunited. 

It's all terribly unsettling. Ominous, even. Most of all, the fact that she still hasn't got a clue what happened at the scene of the crime. A part of her worries that she might be overreacting, that perhaps Vespa's just out for a walk and her comms is out of batteries, but decades of life on the other side of the law has trained her to listen to her instincts. 

She _knows_ that something's wrong. She just can't fathom what it is. 

Thinking back to all the days spent in training with Juno as she makes her way to the door to their room, she wonders whether she's still as quick a draw as before her many recent surgeries. The clack of her cane tip against the wooden floor rings out in the silence as she makes her way over to their room, no doubt alerting anyone to her presence; then again, Vespa hardly enjoys being snuck up upon, so perhaps it's for the best. 

"Love?" she calls again, hardly able to stand the quiet, before carefully pushing the door further open. 

A flashback to Pete's room aboard the Carte Blanche hits her as she surveys the room. _Ransacked_ is a good word for it, but perhaps implies something even more methodical than the state she finds it in. The bedsheets are haphazardly strewn on the floor, a potted plant lies sadly overturned, medical textbooks and old journals lie scattered around the bookshelf. 

Her mechanical eye clicks its shutter rapidly, and she works to steady her breathing. The mess, the implication of a struggle, makes her sick to her mechanical stomach. If only she hadn't left. If only she'd been at home when whatever _this_ is had happened. She scans the clutter once again, hoping for some indication as to where her wife's gone-

and lets out a long breath, all the tension draining out of her, as she spots a silhouette she knows well. The thin beam of light from the cracked-open door illuminates a Rangian wolf, fur a pale green, curled up in a circle near the closet, chest slowly rising and falling as she lets out little snuffling snores.

"Hello, darling," Buddy says quietly. Walks towards her slowly, careful not to startle her awake. As she gets closer, she notices with a fond laugh that Vespa's made herself a little nest of Buddy's clothes. Her snout, ringed by faint greying hairs, is pressed into one of Buddy's favorite sweaters. Buddy considers messaging her cardiologist to inquire whether a sight too adorable could stop her heart. 

She sits down next to her, right on one of her favorite dresses back from when dramatic heists and dazzling personas were a part of her everyday life. It's wrinkled- genuine Venusian silk doesn't take kindly to being used as a wolf's bed, apparently- but she's hardly wearing it around much anymore. Gently, she reaches out one hand and pats the top of Vespa's head.

Vespa lets out a low rumbling sound as she wakes up. She looks disoriented for a second, blinking curiously, and then barks happily when she spots Buddy. Her tail wags from side to side as she pads over to where Buddy's sitting and licks her cheek. 

"I missed you too, dear," Buddy says. "I'm sorry I was gone so long." She doesn't like leaving Vespa alone at all while she's transformed, doesn't like adding another tick mark to the count of times that Vespa's woken up scared and alone in a body she's not terribly accustomed to. 

Vespa seems to forgive her, though, or perhaps simply doesn't understand what she's saying. She blinks at Buddy and lies down across her legs. 

"You're hardly a lapdog, love," Buddy tells her, scratching behind her ears. Vespa doesn't seem bothered by that fact at all, closing her eyes most of the way and letting her tongue loll out. After a few moments, she rolls onto her back, and Buddy laughs.

"All right, all right." She indulgently runs her fingers through the thick green fur on Vespa's stomach. "I wonder whether the real wolves on Ranga are this docile, or if it's just you."

Vespa barks.

"Yes, I'm sure," Buddy humors her, scratching under her chin. "Now, you must be hungry. Come with me."

"I've brought home the bacon," says Buddy when the two have made their way out to the kitchen. "Quite literally. Real cell-grown this time, none of that simulated junk." 

The wordplay is lost on Vespa in this form, tragically. Well, Buddy found it funny, anyways, and that means she can make the joke again, which is nice. She'd spent ten minutes in the grocery store line coming up with it. 

Vespa understands the smell of frying meat, though, and paces eagerly around Buddy's legs as she cooks. Really, given Buddy's perennial lack of appetite and Vespa's lupine eating habits at the moment, she doesn't need to be frying anything, but she enjoys having something to do with her hands. There's very little of their lives together that can be described as _normal,_ from their extralegal exploits to their (certainly) one-of-a-kind lycanthrope-cyborg relationship, so she takes domesticity where she can get it. 

They settle down on the sofa, Vespa with a plastic plate of bacon and sausages, Buddy with a glass of Neptunian vodka. Their meal is quiet, which Buddy secretly appreciates. As much as she loves talking with her wife, as much as she's getting better at not planning out everything before saying it, the quiet gives her mind a chance to calm its usual racing state. 

She idly pats at Vespa's head, pages through a magazine she'd picked up at the store, makes herself laugh by telling Vespa all the second-rate celebrity gossip Ymir has to offer and getting nothing but a blank stare in response, answers Rita's many texts updating the two of them in long-winded form on the crew's most recent exploits. Killing time until the Rangian sunrise.

Vespa falls asleep lying across her lap after a while. There's coarse green hair on the sofa, which Buddy will pretend to be upset about later, but actually finds endearing. More than anything, the image of her darling wife, all curled up and half-swaddled in Buddy's old cocktail dresses and tights and socks, keeps returning to her mind and making her grin. She wishes she'd snapped a photo.

Eventually, long after the dusk has given way to a starless night, Vespa stirs against her. After this long together, Buddy's developed a decent internal sense of the Rangian day-night cycle. She knows to keep her hands to herself as Vespa's form distorts with a worrying crunch of bone on bone, as her limbs extend and her body warps and wavers. 

And then, after a minute that always, without fail, feels far longer, Vespa groans and flops back down into Buddy's lap, decidedly human again. 

"Fuck," she proclaims, "ow. Hi."

"Hello, dear." Buddy brushes Vespa's hair from her face. "How are you feeling?"

"Like I got my body and brain all squished into a wolf shape a whole week early and didn't even have any Advil to take beforehand," she grumbles as she pushes herself up into a sitting position. "Not so great."

"I'm sorry," Buddy kisses her forehead. "Does this- does it happen sometimes, now? The wolf days coming early?" She can't remember this having happened in the past.

Vespa shrugs. "New meds, maybe? Should've known I couldn't get away with hiding my _furry little problem_ from my endo." She grabs one of the sofa's pillows, puts it over her face.

"Certainly a preexisting condition." Buddy takes Vespa's hand in hers, traces her thumb over her knuckles gently. "I'm sorry I wasn't here for you, darling."

"You didn't know. It's okay. I was fine." She tosses the pillow aside, takes a long sip from a half-empty water bottle on a table by the sofa. Opens her mouth to say something, then closes it again.

"Really?" Buddy wraps her arms around Vespa's waist, pulls her in so their foreheads are almost touching. "You don't have to be fine, you know."

"No," Vespa sighs. "I, uh- I missed you. A lot. And the new place and all, it didn't, uh, you know. I couldn't smell you anywhere, when I woke up, and I was worried. When I couldn't find you. I don't remember that much."

"That explains the state of our room, at least." She runs her fingers through Vespa's hair, goes to scratch the top of her head on instinct and then catches herself with half a smile. 

"Aw, hell." Vespa blushes. "How bad is it?"

"Well," Buddy starts with a grin. "All I'll say is that it's a mystery to me how you managed to get the closet door open."

**Author's Note:**

>  **public service announcement to all readers** : WLW fic- in the penumbra fandom and otherwise- gets like at best a third of the love as gen or non-WLW fic. people like what they like and im not telling anyone what to read. but PLEASE, if you enjoyed this, let me know!! it really means a lot!! slap a kudos or (even better) a comment on it! 
> 
> since someone pointed out how this AU could possibly be seen as harmful in terms of werewolf-izing a canonically psychotic character: both me, leo opaldawn l'auteur, and danny the AU creator, deal with psychosis and hallucinations. also, if you read it, i hope it's clear that this is very much not meant to fall into any werewolfey tropes or make vespa out to be in any way dangerous. 
> 
> title is from bryan scary's Bird or Beast? go give my man bryan scary some LOVE


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